Friends Like These: My Worldwide Quest to Find My Best Childhood Friends, Knock on Their Doors, and Ask Them to Come Out and Play

by Danny Wallace

  * * *

  “This is exciting!” said Bob, as we boarded the train. “This is like an adventure! I have never been to Yamanashi or to its university hospital!”

  “Me neither!” I said, happily.

  “So he’s got no idea you’re coming?”

  We sat down.

  “Nope. I’m just going to turn up and force him to meet me.”

  “Any particular reason?”

  “He’s not very good at replying to emails. And I can’t risk him saying no. I have to get him, because when I get home, I’ll only have one friend left from the Book. And he’s left me a message, so he’s in the bag. Which means that, come November 16th, I’ll have completed my project. And then I can grow up happily and buy display cushions.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Bob.

  I opened up my rucksack and brought out my address book.

  “This is the Book,” I said. “Twelve names, all of them representing a key part of my childhood. And Akira is number eleven…”

  “I still don’t understand,” said Bob.

  And as we entered a tunnel, I filled him in.

  Bob was fascinated by the photos, as he scrolled through my phone. We were shooting through Japan at the speed of light, on a clean and sleek whispering train.

  Bob and I had met at university, ten years earlier, when we’d started an underground student magazine which we’d sneak into the official university magazines and then pretend had nothing to do with us. It had been a great bonding experience, with late nights, stupid jokes and early-morning reconnaissance missions using fake IDs and people “on the inside” to get our magazine out there. There had been controversial issues, obviously. Once, in a rush to get the magazine finished, I had tried to headline an article—BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: ONE LEGEND, ONE STAGE. But in the rush it had appeared as BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: ONE LEGGED ON STAGE. Don’t tell Lizzie—remember, my spelling is excellent.

  Bob had gone on to become a photographer, a journalist for a Marxist newspaper (despite no Marxist tendencies whatsoever) and now an En glish teacher. He’d met a girl in Osaka—Tomoko—and life was good.

  We were scheduled to arrive in Yamanashi city sometime around twelve, meaning we’d have the whole afternoon to spend with Akira before hopping back on for the two-hour journey back to Tokyo, where I planned to celebrate in style.

  Bob found another photo.

  “And who’s that?” he asked

  “Peter Gibson,” I said. “I met him in Melbourne a couple of days ago. He’s an architect who once had a paper round. We ate noodles and went bowling.”

  “And this one?”

  “That’s Anil. He’s the first one I got back in contact with, really. His mum made me eat more curries than is technically legal. He showed me my old house but then the people inside thought we were going to rob them.”

  Bob kept flicking through.

  “And… this?”

  “That’s me in LA.”

  “Why are you dressed as a rabbit?”

  “It’s very complicated.”

  He handed the phone back and smiled.

  “I think this is great,” he said. “Getting back to basics. Seeing the people who saw you grow up.”

  “Ever considered it?”

  “Well… I’ve googled people. But never taken it much further than that. I kind of suspect that most of my old mates are still in the same place, and all working in IT…”

  “You’d be surprised,” I said.

  “I think we’re arriving…”

  The train slowed to a halt, and there was the sign. YAMANASHI-SHI. We were here.

  “Are you hungry?” asked Bob.

  “I had a pasta bap,” I explained.

  “I’m hungry,” said Bob. “Or maybe I’m just excited.”

  It was sweet, Bob’s excitement. He reached into his bag and brought out a jam sandwich and a small flask of juice. I looked at him, and swelled with pride. We were two friends, on a mission. A mission of great import. Striding out into the unknown, with jam sandwiches and orange juice, and nothing but a dream. It felt like we were two of the Famous Five, or something, on the trail of a lost friendship.

  “Right!” said Bob, realizing he was now in charge. “There’s a map!”

  I looked around the station platform while Bob studied the map on the wall. A small child with a balloon was staring at me. I smiled at him. He smiled at me. A train pulled in and out got a samurai.

  “Bob…” I said, tapping him on the shoulder but not taking my eyes off the ancient warrior.

  “Hmm?” he said, still engrossed in the map.

  “There’s a samurai over there,” I said.

  “Is there?” he said, still not turning round.

  “He’s got a sword and armor and everything.”

  “Oh.”

  “I thought samurais were from… you know… the seventh century.”

  “Yeah,” said Bob. “It’s probably just a ghost.”

  I stopped tapping his shoulder.

  I started again.

  “He’s stopping at that vending machine, Bob. The samurai is buying some crisps, Bob.”

  Bob didn’t seem all that interested in samurais buying crisps. The small boy with the balloon did, though. He turned and looked at me. We raised our eyebrows at each other and made impressed faces.

  “Right!” said Bob. “I think I know what to do.”

  Upstairs, there were more samurais, just milling about, chatting.

  “Is this normal, Bob?” I asked. “Because there do seem to be an awful lot of samurais in Japan.”

  “Samurais are actually a Japanese invention,” said Bob, wisely.

  “Yeah, but they’re not supposed to be just wandering about,” I said. “Who’s let all these samurais out? It’s not like you arrive at Heathrow and you’re immediately overwhelmed by Beef-eaters, is it?”

  “I suppose so,” said Bob, and he stopped, and took in the samurais. “There must be some kind of show on.”

  “Something that appeals to samurais?” I asked.

  “Or that involves people dressing up as them,” said Bob, and actually that made more sense.

  “There’s one eating a hamburger!” I said. “Look at his ax! Are you allowed to take an ax into a restaurant here?”

  “Samurais are not generally allowed in restaurants,” said Bob, with a real and impressive sense of authority.

  “Not like ninjas, then,” I said. “I couldn’t bloody move for them last night.”

  Bob laughed. I think he thought I was joking.

  “Let’s walk up that street there,” he said, brightly, and we followed a samurai who was pushing his bike.

  “So all we have to do is find the university,” said Bob, as we stopped on a gentle incline and studied the map. “It should be straight up this road…”

  “Excellent work, Bob,” I said, patting him on the back, and noticing a sign in the window of the beauty shop opposite advertising “EXTENSION LIPS.”

  “We’re lost, aren’t we?” I said, ten minutes later.

  “We’re not lost,” said Bob. “It’s just that I had the map upside down. I’m not very good at reading Japanese letters yet.”

  “Okay…”

  “And also, that was a map of Tokyo.”

  We walked back past the EXTENSION LIPS shop again.

  “This it it!” said Bob. “This is Yamanashi University!”

  I took it in. So this was where I would finally meet Akira Matsui. Somewhere within these large, sunlit walls I would find the man I’d traveled halfway across the world to see. Well, all the way across, and then halfway back.

  We strode up to the guard manning the small security cabin at the gates.

  “Hello!” I said, loudly, and then, realizing I had nowhere else to take this, handed over to Bob.

  “You handle this,” I said.

  “My Japanese isn’t brilliant,” he said.

  “Don’t you worry. It’s better than mine.”


  Bob looked nervous, and then, from somewhere deep within, managed to summon up the words: “MEDICAL! UNIVERSITY?”

  The guard just stared at us.

  “MEDICAL! UNIVERSITY?” said Bob, again, even louder this time.

  “Ah!” said the guard, and then he nodded.

  “You see?” I said. “Your Japanese is brilliant!”

  But then the guard frowned, and started to speak very quickly indeed. He pointed from time to time at the map and then down the street. Wherever he pointed, we looked, as if there might be a small sign there translating what he was saying. Neither of us understood a word. But we raised our eyebrows and made encouraging faces and nodded and then, when he’d stopped talking and pointing, Bob held up the map again, and said, “MEDICAL! UNIVERSITY?”

  I stood outside the beauty shop and considered having my lips extended.

  Bob was inside, pointing at his map and saying the words “MEDICAL! UNIVERSITY?” to a confused receptionist.

  I wandered to the little restaurant that sat next door and looked through the window. It was empty, save for an el derly man mopping the concrete floor. A sign on the window said, “10% OFF ON MONDAYS! MEAL FOR TWO PARSONS ONLY!”

  This struck me as a distinctly odd offer. I mean, a 10 percent discount is never to be sniffed at, but why limit your customer base to parsons? And what was the likelihood of a couple of parsons happening to be hungry in Yamanashi and wandering past this restaurant? It seemed like a con to me.

  “No good,” said Bob, wandering out. “She didn’t understand me.”

  “If we were religious men, we’d get ten percent off here on Monday,” I said, pointing at the sign.

  “Hang on… that’s in English,” said Bob.

  “So was ‘Extension Lips,’” I said.

  “But this is proper. Maybe that man in there speaks English…”

  And so in we walked. And it was then that we discovered that Yamanashi University Hospital… is not in Yamanashi.

  “So where now?” I asked, horrified, as we bounded up the stairs of the train station. “Where is Yamanashi University Hospital?”

  “Well,” said Bob, studying his map, and sidestepping a samurai. “According to that old man, we’ve got to get to Kofu.”

  “Kofu?” I said.

  “It’s a completely different town.”

  “A different town?”

  “That’s where the university is…”

  “I thought we’d been to the university,” I said.

  “No. It turns out that was a spectacles factory. At least, I think that’s what he said. I don’t really know what the word for ‘spectacles’ is. Anyway, we’d better get a move on…”

  We found our train and sat down next to a samurai eating an apple.

  I looked at my watch. It was already 2 p.m. This is fine, I told myself.

  I broke into a sweat.

  “Right,” said Bob, as I stood outside a shop in Kofu. This one sold designer T-shirts with well-known Western sayings on them. You know the kind of things. “Swarms of Winter Gnats Run High!” was one. “Give Me Strength! Are You Serious? Pise Myself Laughing!” was another. Pretty standard stuff.

  “Right what?” I said, glancing at my watch. It was twenty to three. Time felt like it was slipping away from me. I had to get back to Tokyo tonight so I could get my flight in the morning. I had to get my flight in the morning. And I had to meet Akira before I did that.

  “I said the words ‘medical’ and ‘university’ really loudly again, and this woman started nodding loads. Mark my words, Dan, we’re going to find you Akira Matsui!”

  “This is brilliant,” I said. “So where’s the hospital?”

  “Well… it’s actually in a completely different town from Kofu,” said Bob. “But don’t worry—they have a train station. Let’s go!”

  The train was painfully slow.

  Really, truly, painfully slow.

  We were rumbling gradually towards a place called Joieu, somewhere deep in the heart of the Japanese countryside. Around us were ancient Japanese women, all of whom looked like they’d probably seen samurais the first time round, and who carried old and tattered bags of strange foods. I looked out of the window to see us being overtaken by an old man on a bike. My tummy grumbled. It’d been hours since my pasta bap, and Bob had long since finished his sandwiches and squash.

  “Okay,” said Bob. “Joieu should be the next stop.”

  “It’s nearly four o’clock,” I said. “We’re going to have to work fast.”

  “Don’t you worry,” said Bob. “According to the map, there’s a road that’ll take us right there…”

  “You had the map upside down again, didn’t you?” I said, as we stood, in the middle of a field, surrounded by mountains and beaten down by the sun.

  “Pretty much, yeah,” said Bob.

  Somehow I’d managed to get mud all over my jeans, and Bob had a leaf in his hair. I stood outside myself and imagined how we must appear. For a second, everything was silent. Because there are moments in life when you come to question your actions. Moments of outstanding clarity and purest thought, when you look around you, you take in your environment, you work out what brought you here, and you decide that something is wrong.

  For me, it was happening right now.

  Right now, right this very second, in the middle of a harsh and sparse Japanese countryside, a little over a week before my thirtieth birthday, past a town I couldn’t remember the name of, full of people whose names I couldn’t pronounce.

  It was now four o’clock and I looked around me. I took in my environment. I worked out what had brought me here. And I decided that something was wrong.

  Here I was, standing in a rice field under a mountain in the afternoon sun, a Westerner in the far, far East, wearing grubby sneakers, mud-flecked jeans and a T-shirt with the face of a small Japanese boy on it.

  And I was lost.

  I dug into my pocket and pulled out the document I’d brought with me.

  That’s when I looked at it.

  An Investigation on the Influence of Vitreous Slag Powders on Rheological Properties of Fresh Concrete

  I stared at it for a moment, then put it away again. It wasn’t helping.

  But there—there, in the distance, just beyond a scattering of houses and a girl on a bike, I saw something. A vast, bright white block. This was what I needed. This was what I had come for.

  “There, Bob—what’s that?”

  “What?”

  “That building! That building there! That looks like… a hospital!”

  Bob studied the map. Worked out the direction we’d been going. Turned the map around a couple of times. And then said, “It is… that’s Yamanashi University Hospital…”

  And now all we had to do was find Akira…

  * * *

  “I’m trying to find Akira Matsui,” I said, to the first student I saw. “Akira Matsui? He has this face, only older…”

  I pointed desperately at my T-shirt. The student smiled and then moved away quickly.

  “Does anyone here speak En glish?”

  I was in a crowded courtyard outside the hospital. It had taken longer to walk to the hospital than we’d thought. It never seemed to get any bigger, always taunting us from a distance, never quite being in reach. But now, red-faced and thirsty, here we were, and there was some kind of celebration going on. A Japanese heavy metal band was thrashing about on a stage. Food was being cooked and sold. Everyone was laughing and happy. Everyone except me. I was getting increasingly desperate.

  “Maybe we should ask inside?” said Bob, chewing on a hot dog and then offering me some. I waved it away. I had no time for food.

  “They might have a staff list,” he said. “Or a special area where all the doctors sit?”

  It was a good idea. I barreled through the double doors and immediately saw a noticeboard.

  “There!” I said.

  Bob and I ran up to it and simply stared at it. Eve
rything was in Japanese. It wasn’t surprising. We were in Japan.

  “Any ideas?” I said, while Bob tried his best to decipher the code.

  “Mah-ts-oo-eh…” he said, tracing his finger down a sheet of paper. “Can’t see anything…”

  “Excuse me,” I said, to a passing student. “Do you speak any English?”

  He smiled apologetically and moved on.

  “Does anybody know this man?” I said, loudly, and pointing at my chest. “Akira Matsui? Anyone? Akira Matsui!”

  But I got nothing back except embarrassed looks.

  And then…

  “Matsui?”

  There was a thin and wiry student with a kind face looking back at me.

  “Matsui sensei?”

  Sensei! Hang on—that meant… teacher! I knew it did! I’d seen it on The Karate Kid! Akira must be teaching here as well as being a medical doctor! It made perfect sense!

  “Yes! Sensei! Yes!” I said. “Sensei, Bob, sensei!”

  Bob gave me a double thumbs-up and looked excited.

  “I know him,” said the stranger.

  “You do? Can you take me to him? I’m an old friend!”

  He shrugged.

  “I think yes…”

  I shot Bob a look. This was it!

  “You come with me,” said our new friend, whose name was Kyohei. “I can try to help you…”

  “This is very kind of you,” I told Kyohei. “I haven’t seen Akira in many years…”

  “This is chance for me practice En glish,” he said. “One day I wish to be a doctor in a foreign land.”

  “Is Akira teaching you well?”

  “Matsui sensei is good teacher. Good man.”

  I smiled. I knew he would be.

  “Come, we find his room…”

  Kyohei, Bob and I marched down a dark corridor. A flickering striplight briefly lit the olive green floors and drab beige walls, and I stole quick glances into offices as we walked. I’d never have found my way here without Kyohei. And I’d never have found my way to Kyohei without Bob. I was filled with gratitude for the kindness of friends, and the kindness of strangers. Without these two, I’d still be trying to break into a spectacles factory in Yamanashi, possibly with greatly extended lips.

  Finally, after what seemed like a thousand double doors and faceless corridors, we arrived at a room.